RMB30 trillion (£3.1 trillion) ... is the cumulative profit made by
various Chinese government agencies over the past quarter century from
confiscating land from farmers and then selling it on to property
developers.

Debate rages over what constitutes the biggest theft in human history (Native
American land, Nazi gold, the gambling industry etc), but this is surely a
solid contender. In the case of the great Chinese compensation swindle, the
fact that so many of its victims are alive, aggrieved and number in the tens
of millions means Beijing is fairly brave to allow the figure to surface at
all.

It is understandable that the construction of an air-polluting,
noise-blighting £22 billion third runway to turn Heathrow into the world’s
pre-eminent superhub caught the eye, but the Davies report into airport
expansion also made another radical suggestion: that — third runway or not —
Heathrow should start acting like the UK hub that it pretends to be